The Domination, page 105
“Distance,” she said.
“Two-hundred-twenty klicks. Transit of asteroid in seventy-one seconds, ten klicks clearage.” Just enough to avoid the worst of the fusion-bomb explosions.
Nothing for it but to wait; all the orders were given, the personnel ready. Sweat soaked into the permeable fabric of her skinsuit, under the armpits and down the flanks, chill in the moving air the ventilators sent across her body. Sixty seconds. Life or death decided in one minute; victory and glory, or eternal shame. Genius, or a goat. Which I wouldn’t be there to see. Bones of the White Christ, this sort of thing sounds better in retrospect. Adventure is somebody else in deep shit far, far away.
Fifty seconds. Snappdove had thought she was insane, for a while. Maybe I was. Dammit, they are pressing home their pursuit. The Alliance wanted to damage her; the only way to do it was to chase her cruisers off far enough that they could do a firing pass at the asteroid and its work force as they turned and fled themselves. A two-body problem with only one solution.
Ten. Five. The pursuers maintaining position with beautiful precision; those were good ships and well-trained crews. Three. Two. Past.
“Now!” she shouted, superfluously.
“DECELERATION,” the speakers sounded. It wrenched at her, throwing her forward against the combat cocoon. Reaction mass was being vented from the forward ports, run through the heat dumpers to vaporize. Not nearly so powerful as the drive, but enough to check their headlong flight. The main drives of the Alliance craft lit in a brief blossom of flame, just enough to match.
And the asteroid was turning. A mass of billions of tonnes is very difficult indeed to move out of its accustomed orbit; it had taken dozens of fusion weapons to spend that much energy. It is much easier to pivot such a mass about its center of gravity; while the hydrogen-bomb flare had hidden them, the cargo vessels had nestled their bows into holes excavated in the rock and ice of the asteroid’s crust. A cruiser could not have done it without self-destruction, but the haulers had been modified to act as pusher tugs at need. Now four drives flared, and the lumpy dark potato shape pivoted with elephantine delicacy. Toward Subotai’s pursuer, blinded by its own drive for the crucial seconds. Fusion blossomed behind the rock’s assigned stern, and the products of it washed out tens of kilometers; charged particles, gamma radiation striking metal and sleeting through as secondary radiation and heat. Through shielding, through the reaction-mass baffles around the command center; tripping relays, overloading circuits, ripping the nervous systems of the human crew as well.
“MANEUVER.” Subotai flipped end over end. “DECELERATION.” The main drive roared, a deeper thrumming note as it poured reaction mass onto the plate and spat out fission pellets at twice the normal rate. The cruiser slowed with a violence that stressed the frame to its limits, as if the ship were sinking into some yielding but elastic substance. Crippled, the Alliance vessel overshot. Weapons flashed out at ranges so short that response time was minimal, from both directions, for the wounded ship was not yet dead.
“Overheat, disperser three.”
“Gatling six not reporting.”
“Penetration! Pressure loss in reaction baffle nine.”
“Wotan, get that missile, get it, get it.” Rising tension, until the close-in gatlings sprayed the homing rocket’s path with high-velocity metal. It exploded in a flower of nuclear flame, and the radiation alarms shrilled.
Yolande felt the cruiser shake and tone around her, like a vast mechanical beast crying out in pain. Sectors flicked from green to amber to red on the screens; but the Alliance ship was suffering worse, its defenses shattered.
“Hit!” Railgun slugs sleeted into the Washington’s heat dispersers. “Hit!” Parasite bombs dropped away from the Subotai’s stern, into the neutron flux of the drive; their own small bomblets detonated, and the long metal bundles converted energy into X-ray laser spikes.
“She’s losing air,” the Sensor Officer reported. “Overheat in her reaction mass tanks—pressure burst—losing longitudinal stability—she’s tumbling!”
Lasers raked across the enemy; armor sublimed into vapor and the computers held the beams on, chewing deeper. The particle guns snapped; sparks flickered along the cartwheeling form of the Alliance cruiser. Then the exterior screens darkened.
“Something got through,” the Weapons Officer said softly, and consulted his screens. “Secondary effects . . . her fuel pellets just went.”
A cheer went through the Subotai, a moment’s savage howl of triumph.
“Stow that!” Yolande snapped. “Sensors, report.”
“The Bolivar’s breaking and runnin’ fo’ it, ma’am.” Only sensible; with two ships to her one, the Draka could bracket and overwhelm her.
“Damage Control?”
“Ship fully functional. Missin’ one gatling turret. Three dead, seven injured.” Yolande winced inwardly. Shit. “Slow leaks in two sectors of the reaction mass tank. Seventy-one percent nominal. Drive full, remainder weapons systems full.”
“Number Two, shape fo’ pursuit.” There was a momentary pause in the drive, and it resumed at normal high-burn rates. Stars crawled across the screens as the attitude jets adjusted their bearing. “If Bolivar gets back within the orbit of Luna, they’ll do it with dry tanks an’ scratches on that shiny new thrust plate.” A pulsedrive ship could move on fuel pellets alone; the first generation had, using vaporized graphite from the lining of the plate as reaction mass. It was neither recommended, good for the frame, nor safe.
“Oh, and all hands,” she said, switching to the command push, “well done.”
Chapter Fifteen
SPIN HABITAT SEVEN, CENTRAL BELT
BETWEEN THE ORBITS OF MARS AND JUPITER
JANUARY 4, 1983
Habitat Seven was the latest and largest of the Project’s constructs, half a kilometer across and two long; nickel-iron was cheap, and easy to work with big enough mirrors. Now the former lump of metal-rich rock was a spinning tube, closed at either end, with a glowing cylinder of woven glass filament running down its center. There was atmosphere inside, and part of the inner surface had already been transformed; gravity was .5 G, as much as was practical or necessary. Grass grew in squares of nutrient-rich dust, and hopeful flowers. Individual houses were going up, foamed rock poured into molds; there were dozens of different floor plans.
“Goddamn circus,” Frederick Lefarge said. “We’re running this like the bloody Los Alamos bomb project, back in the ’40s. Everything and the kitchen sink.”
“Not really,” the man beside him on the polished-slag bench said. “In the long run, the actual construction will go faster if we spend the time to get the infrastructure in place.” A sigh. “And even the . . . fourth Project will require a good deal of preliminary groundwork. We are going to miss Dr. Takashi very badly, as the years go by. I am more for the crystals and wafers and wires, me; he was the instruction set genius.”
“Yes.” He looked aside at Professor Pedro de Ribeiro: a vigorous-looking forty-five, with the usual Imperial Brazilian goatee in pepper-and-salt and an impeccable white linen suit; the cane and gloves were, the American thought, a little much. Very competent man, but . . . “I’d have thought that was less so for the final Project than for the rest of the New America enterprises. It’s basically a set of compinstructions, isn’t it?”
“Não.” De Ribeiro’s English was impeccable, but it slipped now and then. “I have been thinking much on this matter, since I was contacted . . . and have concluded that we must almost reinvent the art of information systems here, if we are to accomplish what we wish.” He rested his hands on the silver head of his cane and leaned forward. “Abandon our assumption that because we have always done things one way, that is the inevitable path. Another legacy of the struggle with the Domination . . . Tell me, Señor Lieutenant Colonel, what would you say to the idea of writing compinstruction procedures on a perscomp?”
Lefarge blinked, taken aback. “That’s . . . well, it would be like using a shovel as a machine tool, wouldn’t it?”
“Bim, but only because we have made it so.” He tapped the ferrule of the cane on the ground. “Perhaps computers could only have started as they did, large machines used for cryptography, for the handling of statistics. Precious assets, jealously guarded. They have grown immensely faster, immensely more capable, even rather smaller—that first all-transistor model in 1942 was the size of a house!—but not different in nature.”
“Well, how could they be?”
“For example . . . it is certainly technically possible to build central processing units small enough to power a perscomp. Yes, yes, quite difficult, but the micromachining processes we have developed for other purposes would do . . . if there were a strong development incentive. But our computers were always, hmm, how shall I say, limited in access. Perscomps were developed from the other end up, from the machinery intended to run machine tools, simulations, deal with the real world; only their instruction storage and the interfacers are digital, and the rest is analog. We build them for a range of specific uses, and then develop the instruction sets on larger machines; they are loaded into the smaller in cartridges. Complicated machines such as space warcraft have a maze of subsystems like that, linked to a central brain.”
Wild speculation combined with restatement of the obvious, Lefarge thought. Then: No, wait a minute. We’ve been too narrowly focused on immediate problems. The Project’s going to need real ingenuity, not just engineering. “But if we’d gone the other way . . . Jesus, Doctor, it’d be a security nightmare! Even as it is, we have to throw dozens of people in the slammer every year for illegal comping. There might be . . . oh, thousands of amateurs out there screwing around with vital instruction sets. The Draka could scoop it up off the market! Then think of the problems if you could copy embedded corepaths and instruction sets over the wires between perscomps. Lord . . . ”
The Brazilian nodded. “Exactly! And who would find it more difficult to adjust to such a world, us or them? We must be radical, on our Project. That is an example.”
He laughed as the younger man rocked under the question’s impact. “Also, one of the reasons I have come here. Here we will be relatively free of the security restrictions—if only because we are already imprisoned, in a sense! For the first time, a completely free exchange of ideas and data.”
Another tap at the metallic pebbles of the walkway. “The thing we wish to devise, it must be more than a set of hidden compinstructions. It must be a self-replicating, self-adjusting pattern of information, a . . . a virus, if you will. One able to overcome all the safeguards the Draka place on their machines; the redundant systems, the physical blocks, the many interfaces. We will have to reinvent many aspects of our art. Takashi agreed with me; it is better to start with a majority of younger men . . . and women, to be sure—ones free of the rather bureaucratized, specialized approach of other research institutes. And less dominated by us old men, who are so sure what is possible and what impossible! The New America, the starship, that is engineering. Wonderful engineering, many tests, unfamiliar challenges, but development work. In our Project, we must learn new ways to think. Ah, the señora, your wife.”
She was walking now, with care and in this half-gravity. The forgetfulness was diminishing, and the crying fits; there would be no need for more transplants. The doctors were quite pleased . . . Something squeezed inside his gut, as he looked at her. She looked . . . a well-preserved forty, and moved with slow, painful care. Her face had filled out, a little, and she had gained back some of the weight, if not the muscle tone. The hair was cropped close, and only half gray; her teeth were the too-even white of implanted synthetic. Professor de Ribeiro rose and bowed over her hand.
“A salute to one so lovely and so brave,” he said formally, bowing farewell to them both.
Cindy sank down with a sigh, and leaned her head against Fred’s shoulder. He put his arm around hers, feeling the slight tremor of exhaustion.
“Should you be up, honey?” he asked gently.
“I’ll never get any better if I don’t push it a little. I was with the girls,” she said. “God, they’re doing great, darling. Just . . . I get so tired all the time.” He looked down, and saw that slow tears were leaking from under closed lids, made wordless sounds of comfort. “And I feel so old, and useless and ugly.”
“You’re the most beautiful thing in the solar system, Cindy,” he said with utter sincerity. “I’ve never doubted it for a single instant.”
She sighed again. “I like the professor. He’s on whatever-it-is that’s being hidden behind the New America, isn’t he?”
Cindy laughed quietly, without stirring, as he tried to conceal his start of alarm. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, I haven’t been steaming open your letters . . . Honestly, I’m sick, not stupid. And I’ve had plenty of time to think, and anyway we’re all here for the duration. I do like the professor; he reminds me of Dr. Takashi—”
Suddenly she began to shake, and he turned to hold her in the circle of his arms. “Oh God, oh God, the end of his hand was gone and, and, uhhh—”
“Shhh, shhh,” he said. “I’m here, honey, I’ll always be here, I’ll never let them hurt you again. Never again.” The taste of helplessness was in his mouth, like burning ash.
At last she was still again. “Sorry. Sorry to be such a . . . baby,” she said, gripping the breast of his uniform.
“God, honey, you’re stronger than I could ever be.”
She shook her head. “I get angry, and then I start feeling so sorry for everyone.” A long pause. “Even her.”
“Now, that’s going a bit too far,” he said, trying for humor. Funny, hatred is actually a cold feeling. Like an old-fashioned injection at the dentist’s.
“No, darling. I tried to think how it would be, if somebody killed you, you know, what she said . . . ”
“That filthy—” He bit off the words. “Sorry, honey.”
“They can’t help what their . . . way of life does to them. You know,” she continued, “I think she really didn’t want to hurt any of us, until she recognized your picture. It was as if she just . . . had a blind spot, couldn’t understand why we weren’t doing what she wanted, as if we were making her fight us. She . . . had them put all the other children in safely, with enough to . . . to eat.”
He held her tighter. “Try not to think of it,” he said. “And, honey, I’d do almost anything for you, except forgive the people who did this to you.”
“I wouldn’t want you to,” she said unexpectedly, looking up at him bleakly. “I don’t want you to become like that, eaten up with hate. But I don’t want those people in the same universe as my children, either. Kill them all, Fred. Whatever you’re doing here, do it.”
The tension went out of her. “I really do feel sorry for them, though. What a life it must be, without a real home, without love—without even natural children. That’s the first love of all, for the baby in your arms.” Cindy yawned. “I feel sort of sleepy, Fred sweetheart,” she whispered. “Take me home.”
He bent and lifted her with infinite gentleness.
CLAESTUM PLANTATION
DISTRICT OF TUSCANY
PROVINCE OF ITALY
JANUARY 5, 1983
“Shit, I hope I’m in time,” Yolande muttered to herself. She keyed the console and spoke: “Central Mediterranean Control, Ingolfsson 55Z-4, here. Mach one-point-one at 9,985 meters, permission to commence descent.”
“CMC here,” an amused voice replied; one of the Citizen supervisors who had been following her dash from the orbital scramjet port in Alexandria. Being a national hero was proving more trying than she had expected, but it had its compensations. “Permission granted, we’ve cleared it.”
“I’m not goin’ need much room,” she replied. Her hand hit the safety overrides—Not designed for fighter pilots anyway—and kept the wings at maximum sweep-back; the Meercat turned on its side and dove.
“Right,” she said. “Remember, this fuckin’ aircar wasn’t built fo’ fighter jocks either.” The ground swelled with frightening speed; she pulled the nose up in a half-Immelmann, vectored the bellyjets to lose speed, grunted as the craft seemed to hit a brick wall in the air. “Aaaaand again.” The sonic boom must have rattled windows for kilometers around. She shoved the wings forward and hit the spoilers; the speed wound down toward aerodynamic stall. “A little too much.” That was the Monte del Chianti ahead; she banked again, giving a touch to the throttle and hedgehopping. That was almost a forgotten sensation; amazing how much faster everything seemed with an atmosphere and planetary surface to reference from.
The Great House lay below her, like a model spread out on its hilltop. Nothing in the front court, and to hell with the pavement. Yolande rolled the craft in a final circuit of the hill, brought the vectored thrust fully vertical; the wings folded into their slots, and she could hear the landing gear extend as she let the aircar fall at maximum safe descent.
“God, I hope I’m in time,” she said to herself. The canopy retracted and she vaulted out, hit the ground running, paused at the main stairs.
“Hiyo, Ma, Pa, I’m home. Am I in time?”
Her parents glanced at each other. “Everyone from here to Florence knows you home, after that approach, and yes. Only just. Run fo’ it, girl!” her father said.
Yolande ran. Through corridors, hurdling furniture, once over a startled housegirl on her hands and knees scrubbing a floor. Wotan and Thunor, I’m like lead, I should have worked out in the high-G spinner more, she thought dazedly as she arrived at the birthroom door, breathing deeply. A voice stopped her.
“Clean up! Youa clean up before you come in!”
Middy Gianelli, no mistaking that bleak voice. Compelling herself not to fidget, Yolande hurriedly stripped off her uniform jacket and her boots, slipped on a sterile robe and slippers and stood under the UV cleanser until the buzzer sounded. Proper procedure, after all. Almost certainly unnecessary, modern antibacterials being what they were, but there was no sense in taking chances with her baby. Suddenly nervous, she stepped through the door.
